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"Another one, because they know if there is one thing about the internet it is that kittens sell, shows a terrorist with a kitten in one hand and an AK47 in another hand. That is the vision of how they try to get someone on the hook."

Mr Carlin was in the UK to meet his British national security counterparts and discuss ways of combating the spread of the Isis message.

He echoed concerns that the terror group has switched its focus from the battlefield in Syria and Iraq to radicalising vulnerable young people in their bedrooms over the internet and urging them to carry out attacks in their home countries.

"We have an obligation to stop our citizens from going to commit those atrocities. And we need to figure out a way to stop these people getting radicalised, (the notion of ) no passport no travel required, this call to kill where you live," he said.

"What we have done in the US is convened a group of Hollywood executives, Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue advertising executive and civil society and walked through what we saw as the threats.

"We really called upon them to apply the same ingenuity that they used to create this method of communication in the first instance and to sell other products on it and figure out how to combat this message and how to do it in the social media echo chambers that it reaches."

He added: "To be clear we are not working with them to design the content. We called upon them to help and we described the threat.

"We asked them on their own 'can you work with others, like you have done in other spaces where you have done non profit campaigns to see what will be an effective way to keep people from going down those paths?'"

"Like they have done with anti-gang and anti-smoking initiatives in the past."